The advent of karaoke machines and video games that allow people to sing or play an instrument along with accompanying background track have ushered in a new form of entertainment, as people can interactively provide their contribution to a piece of music. While typical karaoke systems have evolved in a direction that facilitates singing over a piece of pre-recorded music by providing graphic and lyrical cues over a instrumental backing track, such systems provide a relatively narrow entertainment experience and do not perform any analysis or provide the necessary feedback that is necessary for allowing amateur singers or musicians to improve their vocal or instrumental skills. Likewise traditional music teaching methods, such as in-person or videotaped lessons generally lack an entertainment component that genuinely engages a student.
Many present music playback systems consist of a microphone, a source or input for recorded music, an amplifier, and speakers for audio output. These systems allow a user to sing or play over a piece of music and hear his or her performance played over the original music track. Such systems, however, include the all of the original vocal and instrument tracks and it is difficult, therefore to accurately hear or judge the accuracy of the superimposed portion over the original music. Basic karaoke machines provide source music in which the vocal component (or an instrument component) has been suppressed or reduced in volume so that a user's input can be more clearly heard over the source music. Such systems consist of an audio mixer with a microphone input built into a music playback system. These music playback systems can be tape machines, Compact Disc (CD) machines, Video CD, Laser Disc, DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) machines, streaming media players, or any similar playback machine. Most karaoke machines employ a specially formatted source track, such as CD+G that includes graphic data in addition to the audio data on the disk. These graphics can display lyrics, music notation, and any video or graphic image that is suitable for playback on the karaoke machine. Another audio standard that has been developed for karaoke is the .KAR format for MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) players. This format is used in conjunction with computer programs that use MIDI instrumentation to generate the accompaniment rather than a recorded track.
Basic karaoke systems rely on music sources in which the audio portion for such customized formats and media typically has the vocal (or other desired instrument) component entirely eliminated through deletion of such tracks from the source media (e.g., master tape or disc) or through replication on a different (e.g., purely instrumental version). Such systems thus require special instrument-only tracks to be provided or require the use of non-original source music. Such systems also require expensive and complicated playback systems. This prevents such systems to be used with any type of source music and in any format.
Many basic music playback entertainment systems may be set up to provide a “karaoke mode” that attempts to remove the vocal track from a regular audio CD. Such methods are typically based on a crude center removal technique that tries to take advantage of the fact that the vocals in most music are in the center in a stereo system, as opposed to either solely on the right channel or the left channel. The vocal track is thus of equal volume on both stereo channels with no phase difference, and the center removal technique subtracts the left channel from the right channel in an attempt to cancel out the common vocal signal. This approach however often results in poor performance due to the simple fact that many other instruments are mixed in the center and are consequently also removed.
While karaoke systems are fine as entertainment systems for interactive singing, they do not provide an adequate platform for music training, as they are typically expensive and rely on a proprietary music format and playback system, and require the user to pay for each instance of a playback session, thus forcing multiple payments for the same song. Traditional music training systems based on classes or video-based or online lessons are often limiting in that they can be expensive, stressful and/or uninteresting. The popularity of television shows, such as American Idol®, has spawned the release of video games that try to replicate the music audition environment in which users attempt to sing or play along with piece of music to compete and receive a score based on their performance. Such systems, however, provide only a limited number of source songs, and require music tracks that are tagged or formatted to special requirements. Such systems typically also provide very limited user input and system feedback information.
What is needed, therefore, is a music training and entertainment system that allows a user to input a selection of source music in a native format, and isolates a desired vocal or instrument component within the source music, compares the user's performance to the source performance, and then provides meaningful and entertaining feedback in a manner that encourages the user to practice and improve his or her performance.
What is further needed is an interactive personal music performance entertainment system that does not require the use of expensive proprietary playback equipment or require the user effectively re-purchase the same music multiple times, and which can allow a user to exploit the vast amount of different music available from online sources in their native format.